Apple Launches iTunes Match in Canada, a Saving Grace for Illegal Music Downloaders

Have you ever pirated music and wound up with a lack of album art, inaccurate genre/artist/title information, and an overall messy iTunes library?

Of course not—that would be illegal. But in theory, if you had, you would be excited to hear that Apple has launched iTunes Match in Canada. As part of iCloud, the $28-per-year add-on service works its magic to turn your stockpile of messy, illegal downloads into beautiful, pristine renditions.

iTunes effectively takes up to 25,000 songs to match them with its 20 million songs. Any time it finds one of your songs on iTunes, it gives you a clean slate: the song gets all its accurate information added, including the album art, and you even get a high-quality version if you had downloaded a low-quality version. Apple's Match service ignores the potentially illegal origins of your music—it's entirely non-discriminating.

Music services have been very slow to come to Canada. Google and Amazon have not yet come North, nor have other companies like Pandora and Spotify. iTunes Match launched in the U.S. a month ago.